Welcome to My World

Microsoft thinks it has an “innovative” way to encourage people to use Windows XP (not Vista, amusingly enough) on all these sexy new ultra-portable, ultra-cheap laptop computers instead of Linux (which is what almost every manufacturer of these little machines has been using so far): license XP at a steep discount so long as manufacturers deliberately cripple the hardware.

I don’t have much to add to this update on efforts to combat Microsoft’s modern-day attempts to spread FUD about Linux (that’s “Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt,” in case you were curious — it was an old trick IBM used to use when it commanded the computing market a few decades ago), except to encourage you very, very loudly to go read it.

Microsoft is running a silly “Get the Facts” campaign, designed to distract people from the realities (that Linux and similar platforms are far more reliable and scalable, are easier to use and work with, and are (much) cheaper than Microsoft’s own Windows-based offerings) by spinning so much bullshit it’ll make your head swim. The article I linked to above steps through the latest efforts by the company to continue its smear campaign.

<sarcasm>Of course, Microsoft is really just interested in telling the truth (that nobody but Microsoft can see) about Linux. We’re just all missing the glaring reality. Microsoft has absolutely no motivations beyond just “exposing the truth” in its efforts to convince people to buy its products instead of going with the cheaper/better alternatives.</sarcasm>

Maybe I’ve overlooked something stupid, but Mozilla Firefox 2.x (I haven’t tested in 3.x yet) is quite inflexible about options and command-line arguments for external (“helper”) programs. This manifests itself in a number of ways, but the one I’m dealing with today is this:

• I’ve got Audacious (a music player for Linux) playing a playlist of decent stuff (all streamed internet radio, but that doesn’t matter).
• I’ve got another .PLS (a “playlist” file) I’d like to add to my existing playlist (stick the new tracks contained in the new playlist at the end of the already-defined playlist in my Audacious player)
• Audacious is smart enough to know when it’s run to check if another copy is already running; if so, it just tells that other copy to do what you’ve told the new copy to do
• Audacious defaults to replacing the current playlist with a new file or playlist provided on the command line; to make it append instead, you have to call it with the “—enqueue” command line argument
• Firefox won’t let me add any command line arguments to a helper program

Dammit. That sucks, except that Linux (any Unix, really) makes it quite simple to fix this kind of breakage with a specialized little script.

I laugh hysterically at the MPAA as I write this, since they’ve just been caught (and called out) committing a breach of copyright law.

When you are crusading against the American public for “rampant acts of piracy,” suing your own customers for pirating movies, you probably shouldn’t rip off a copy of Ubuntu, mutate it to have your name, logos, and “approved software” on it, and redistribute it without honoring the license (the GPL) it’s released under.

You also shouldn’t sue your bread & butter customers either, but the MPAA isn’t known for doing smart things.